Tuesday TV Touchbase: The Good Place

Welcome to another edition of Tuesday TV Touchbase, my weekly look at what I’m watching on TV (besides Doctor Who).

This week, our attention turns to The Good Place and the series finale.

The Good Place throughout it’s 4 season run constantly defied expectations. At first, it looked like The Good Place was a wacky comedy about Eleanor, woman who winds up in heaven instead of hell in a wacky cosmic mix up and each week engages in wacky hi-jinks to keep to keep her secret a secret. Much like how Samantha Stevens had to keep her identity as a witch a secret from the neighbors each week on Bewitched. 

After a half dozen episodes, that concept is turned on it’s head.

The season ending revelation that The Good Place was in fact the BAD place totally turned everything inside out like a Picasso fever dream.

Instead of being a wacky comedy about wacky shenanigans in a wacky afterlife, The Good Place became a thoughtful treatise on ethics, philosophy and what people mean to each other. Heady stuff.

If The Good Place defied our expectations during its run, we should expect the unexpected when it ended.

The Good Place could’ve ended two weeks prior. Our gang has managed to save the universe and righted the wrongs of the afterlife. As a reward for their extraordinary good deeds, Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason (and yes, Janet and Michael too) have won entry into the actual for real good place. They board a hot air balloon and ascend into a beautiful sky. We could’ve ended right there, happy in the knowledge that our friends would finally know ultimate joy and peace, left only to our imaginations as to what that might be like.

 But it doesn’t end there.  The next episode finds our gang arriving in the good place, a wonderful place with doorways that can lead each person to do whatever to do whatever you want. It is a paradise that can provide for all your desires and dreams for eternity.

But it’s forked up. It seems that providing for all your desires and dreams for eternity is as much a bug as it is a feature.  It seems after a while, paradise can leave you a mindless zombie devoid of joy. 

Joy without the sadness of it ending becomes less joyful. 

The idea that Michael and Eleanor come up with to save the good place from eternal mind mush is to create another doorway, a final doorway.

Whenever you’re ready and have done all you want to do, you can cross that final doorway and everything just… ends.

Life in paradise regains meaning because it can end. 

The Good Place could’ve ended there. The gang have saved the day one last time and saved paradise.

It doesn’t end there.

The series finale picks up with our gang enjoying the wonders of eternal paradise.  Jason has played the ultimate game of Madden with his father and then reaches a most profound decision.

It’s time to go.

Of all the people we’ve followed in this series, the idea of Jason being the first to realize he’s fulfilled by paradise and is ready to go through the final doorway seems unexpected. But it also seems right. Jason, for all his bad behavior on Earth, was the most innocent of the bunch and would be most in tune to the idea that he had done all he wanted to do. 

Tahani is next except she decides on a 3^rd option: she wants to be an architect. Again, this makes sense. Of all of the group, Tahani was the one who most wanted a more profound sense of purpose. In a choice between doing everything she had done all over again or giving in to oblivion, she would be the one who would find that other way, to be useful and have purpose at last.

Chidi is next to decide it’s time to go through the final doorway. This breaks Eleanor’s heart, begging him to stay because she doesn’t want to be alone. Chidi relents but then Eleanor relents, realizing she’s being selfish. She lets Chidi go. He leaves behind a calendar of himself in a variety of sexy poses. 

Before Eleanor makes her passage through the final doorway, she arranges with Judge Hydrogen to make Michael human so he can live on Earth, his dream come true. And she appeals to Mindy St. Clair, whiling away in the medium place to give the new afterlife system a try, arranging for Tahani to handle Mindy’s tests.

When Eleanor does walk through the doorway, we don’t quite see her, as if our attention cannot focus on her (like a perception filter from Doctor Who). What we do see is a swirling of golden sparks. We follow one to Earth. We see a guy throwing out a piece of mail. As a spark passes near, the guy retrieves the mail and delivers it to Michael who is grateful and tells the guy to “Take it sleazy”, one of Eleanor’s favorite quotes. 

And there the show ends. For all the time taken to say good-bye to each of our friends from the show, the ending seems a bit abrupt.

Even in the final scene, The Good Place defies our expectations.

While it was sad saying goodbye to Eleanor and the others, it was a “happy sad” if you will. Creator Michael Schur ended the show on his terms, something a lot of creators do not get the privilege to do. And likewise, these people we’ve followed for four years ended their stories on their own terms as well, again  something most people in the real world will likely not get to do. It seems the difference between this life and the next is not that it ends here and it doesn’t end there. No, the ultimate reward of life beyond is that we have choices we do not have on Earth, to live our life as we choose and to say goodbye only when we’re ready.

Some really heady stuff to think about from what we thought was going to be a wacky comedy about wacky shenanigans in a wacky afterlife. 

That's that for today's post. Until next time, remember to be good to one another and when you can,  “Take it sleazy”.